Some prior printers remain active a set time after a page is printed. Also, printers typically automatically revert to a standby status at the end of each print job to save energy or to reduce noise or for both objectives. The fuser of a laser printer is at high temperatures during use and the temperature is reduced between print jobs to save energy.
Separately, the motorized scanning polygon mirrors of modern laser printers typically operate at tens of thousands of revolutions per minute. This creates a substantial audible effect that is undesirable when printing is not taking place. As a result, the motor driving the polygon mirror is turned off in many printers automatically when a print job is complete and no other print job is ready for the printer.
Whenever the motor is turned off, the time necessary to bring the motor back to operating speed becomes a factor in the time required by the printer to print the next page of a print job that subsequently becomes ready to print. In one laser printer operative at 30 pages per minutes, the time to bring the polygonal mirror to operating speed is at least 5.5 second.
A host system, such as a scanner, may deliver single pages or groups of pages as a single print job with a short delay between that and the next page or group of pages. During that delay a printer as described in the foregoing would begin reversion to the standby status. This entails considerable loss of time.